Casinos have long sought new ways to induce play on the gaming devices. They try to increase player time on gaming devices, average wager amount, and speed of play. Various techniques have been used in attempts to gain higher casino profits. One such technique in the casino gaming industry is the use of secondary bonus rounds or bonus games. This usually takes the form of a second level inside a base game of a gaming device embodied in software or an add-on top box bonus game. Newer game titles can be created with these secondary levels of play providing a player additional chances of winning even larger prize rewards. Older game titles do not have these newer secondary games or bonus rounds due to game software and hardware upgrade costs, and/or lack of interest of game manufacturers to re-code or configure legacy software, which is often a very difficult task. Also, game resubmission to regulatory agencies is prohibitive in relation to cost, time, and resources. The game manufacturer would rather focus on creating these new features on new software titles under development using a more modem hardware/software platform. As such, it is difficult to provide players of these older gaming devices a secondary “win” opportunity.
In the last decade, player tracking systems have emerged, wherein a player registers for a player-tracking card at a registration desk. The player is typically given a plastic magnetic strip player card for use while playing gaming devices on the casino floor or at the card tables. Each player card has a number on it that associates it with a player record in a casino marketing promotion server.
More recent additions to the casino player tracking systems provide bonus prizes or prize pools that are periodically given to carded players on a random basis to give the player the more instantaneous and larger rewards verses the slow accrual of Bonus Points. This is done for several reasons: to help induce play on the gaming device, to encourage players to become carded players; to create player loyalty for the casino; and to provide bonus prizes without modifying the base gaming device software.
While these bonusing techniques are a significant improvement over non-bonusing systems they, as of yet, do not allow the player to choose the system bonus game they want to play. These systems do give the player an ability to win additional bonus awards on top of the base gaming device, but the player is not in control of the bonus game process in any way. They have no choice as to which prize game or prize pool for which they want to play. It is automatically determined for them by the system.